copyright law

BeeAitch points us to yet another misunderstanding of copyright law, though this one is more amusing than anything else.

It comes from an article from 2005 written by one Dr.

T. Matthew Ciolek, from Australian National University, and it's apparently about "trade routes." Honestly, it doesn't matter what the article is about.

As was unfortunately expected, despite no evidence that this made any economic sense at all, the member states of the EU have agreed to retroactively extend copyright another 20 years, at which point you can expect it to be extended again (thanks to jtdeb

Ah, Righthaven.

An organization called Medical Justice is encouraging doctors and dentists to use copyright law to censor their patients' online reviews.

We found one of their clients in the wild and report on what we learned.

Following Google's decision to create a misleading, myth perpetuating video, supposedly to teach people accused of infringement about copyright law...

Public Knowledge has set up a contest offering $1,000 to whoever can create the "best" copyright school video that helps teach people about copyright.

Quick!

It's sometimes amusing to see how organizations that are strong copyright defenders, because they rely on copyright for certain aspects of their business, respond when copyright law is strengthened in ways that help others.

Suddenly, they seem to react differently, and all the talk about how important copyright is to "protect content creators" goes out the window.

Apparently there's a "highly anticipated" reality show coming soon to US TV called My Parents Are Gonna Love You, in which contestants on the show bring a celebrity home to meet their parents, claiming the two are engaged.

There's some sort of contest involved in how long the "couple" can keep family convinced that the relationship is real.

Sounds... painful.

ars Technica: "Brazil has proposed a broad update to its copyright law (Portuguese) and it contains a surprising idea: penalize anyone who "hinders or impedes" fair use rights or obstructs the use of work that has already fallen into the public domain."

These days it seems like we're hearing about these sorts of rulings every other week or so. Once again, in Spain, a court has made it clear that under the law, it does not make sense to blame a file sharing site for the actions of its users.

While courts in nearby Norway rejected attempts to force ISP Telenor to block The Pirate Bay, the story appears to be quite different in Denmark.

There, Telenor (which had been Tele2) was ordered to block The Pirate Bay, followed by a higher court upholding the block.